The
surface was unpleasantly wet, chiefly in the line of the currents, which
were now seen to pass backwards and forwards between the pits A and C.
In the neighbourhood of the pit B the water stood in a very thin sheet
on the ice, which there was level, and rendered the style of locomotion
necessitated by the near approach of the roof extremely disagreeable, as
I was obliged to lie on my face, and push myself along the wet and
slippery ice, to explore that corner of the cave, being at length
stopped by want of sufficient height for even that method of
progression.
The circle marked D represents a column from the roof, at the foot of
which we found a small grotto in the ice, which I entered to a depth of
6 feet, the surface of the field of ice showing a very gracefully
rounded fall at the edges of the grotto. At the point E there was a
beautiful collection of fretted columns, white and hard as porcelain,
arranged in a semicircle, with the diameter facing the cave, measuring
22 ft. 9 in. along this face. On the farther side of these columns there
were signs of a considerable fall in the ice; and by making use of the
roots of small stalagmitic columns of that material, which grew on the
slope of ice, I got down into a little wilderness of spires and
flutings, and found a small cave penetrating a short way under the solid
ice-floor.
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